


Azimuth

by WrithingBeneathYou



Category: Naruto
Genre: Angst with a Hopeful Ending, M/M, Rescue from Slavery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-09
Updated: 2020-11-09
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:02:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27463873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WrithingBeneathYou/pseuds/WrithingBeneathYou
Summary: Remembrance doesn’t come easily anymore, but the memory of red eyes and lilting laughter will never leave him.
Relationships: Senju Tobirama/Uchiha Izuna
Comments: 17
Kudos: 155





	Azimuth

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings for mild depictions of slavery and implications of trauma.

Tobirama knows an Uchiha when he sees one.

It’s in the confidence of their bearing and the cadence of their voice—a distinctly musical dialect he hasn’t heard in…quite some time. 

Remembrance doesn’t come easily anymore, but the memory of red eyes and lilting laughter will never leave him. Indistinct flashes of clinking ceramic plate, screams, and the roar of water are the only ghosts that remain of a past life he refuses to claim, each specter stained red, red, _red_.

Fear has always been a stalwart companion. Though, it had been more potent then—made thick and acrid by the novelty of war. He recalls a little boy with white hair and more scars than skin caught up in a nightmare not of his own making. He knows that child had family once. A dead mother. Brothers he had been too slow to save. Then it was his turn.

Slavers’ chains are heavy for a man and nigh unsurvivable for the prey of child-hunters. And so, Senju Tobirama died that day. In his place was born a tool with no past, no future but to serve those willing to pay high enough coin to work him for a time. 

Tobirama swallows around chalk dust and looks away from the boisterous conversation being had between his current master and the Uchiha lordling. He or his fellow slaves will be sold or they won’t, a human life bartered for less than the cost of a hog. It makes no difference either way. Trading one hell for another doesn’t even bring the spark of hope it once had. 

Mining at least is honest in the danger of the teeth it bares.

Wiping sweat from his brow, Tobirama continues to hammer in the steel wedges that will soon split this stone megalith into something he can carry. The resounding clinks are cheery and metronomic even as the impact threatens to rip his arms out at the shoulder. The wooden handle of his mallet is thick in his hands and the steel head ideal for caving in the skull of a man.

But, those thoughts are for the living, not the damned. For him, there is only pain.

Another swing, harder than the last, finally starts a fissure through the hulking stone. It tears through the rock’s flesh faster than a shinobi’s katana. The scrape and grind, the heavy impact are all comfortable in their familiarity. He squints to avoid the worst of the dust as a cloud of it slams into his legs and rolls up his naked front. Working the quarries has been a small gift compared to the fields. At least here the thick patina of chalk glued to the sweat on his chest and shoulders offers him some protection from the sun. 

Maybe tonight he’ll even be able to sleep without having to fend off insects from the feast of open blisters and sun-sickness. That’s the future, though. Until the gallows approach or his strength finally fails him, the present is the only thing that exists.

And so he continues working.

He unrolls a length of rope and methodically wraps the stone block up in a simple series of knots—spaced to accommodate the breadth of his shoulders between them—then squats down to take on its weight. It’s as he’s lifting from the knees that the sun goes black and the coolness of shadow offers a brief reprieve from the heat. 

The grunts and groans of dead men’s effort die down just enough to give him pause half way up.

“Are you serious? You should be paying _me_ to even look twice at these sacks of shit!”

There’s the music that has haunted Tobirama’s dreams—stark, real, and only a pace away.

The Uchiha, handsomely featured as they all tend to be, plants a wicked sandal print on the small of the slaver’s back and sends him crashing headlong into Tobirama’s chest. He rebounds off of twenty years-worth of muscle, and falls to the ground in a plume of chalk dust and expletives.

A pink parasol splinters underneath him, sending up a burst of cheap perfume.

Tobirama silently curses the lordling, knowing this public embarrassment will be taken out on their backs in blood this evening, then chastises himself for expecting to survive the day and bows his head.

“This is ridiculous,” the Uchiha shouts before his voice drops into a sudden flatness that reeks of danger. “I’m cutting clan ties. Your product is,” he looks Tobirama up and down, “offensive to my delicate sensibilities. And why the hell would you brand this one’s face?”

Without warning, Tobirama finds steel fingers grasping his chin and forcing his face up. Red is the first thing he sees—the last thing Senju Tobirama saw. For a moment, the world stops and he could swear that this particular shade of crimson shouldn’t be set in the face of a grown man. The cheeks should be rounder and the hair shorter, less well-kempt.

Those eyes belong to a boy with his head thrown back, laughing at the shapes of clouds with white teeth and a crooked smile. Senju Tobirama knew him. Knows him still. 

Then the Uchiha’s gaze turns black and Tobirama slams back into his own broken existence once more. His attention snaps to the scabs on the tops of his feet where it’s safest. 

The Uchiha exhales loudly. “This albino bastard is ugly enough without you making it worse.”

“Uchiha-sama, please,” the master begins, only to be cut off mid-sentence.

A crackle of electricity charges the air with ill-disguised intent. “Please what?”

And that—that is the sound of true danger. Tobirama slowly lowers himself down to his knees, thighs quaking under the prolonged motion and the load of his burden. Keep small. Subservient. Make less of a target for whomever this man is.

He catches a blur of indigo out of the corner of his eye as the Uchiha soundlessly sweeps around him. Ozone flows in his wake, thick and reminiscent of forest loam. 

It’s only by the rustle of cloth that Tobirama can tell the Uchiha has squatted down behind him.

“Please…pretend to be blind?” A pause. “Please…pretend that some lowly little piss-ant didn’t think that he could get away with offering his betters subpar product?” An even longer, darker pause. “Go ahead, slaver, tell me what fantastical world I should be imagining right now. I’ll wait.”

There’s the sound of a throat clicking outside of Tobirama’s field of view. The wind kicks up rock shard and dust, but still no words are forthcoming—as if there were any that could ease the heat of a shinobi’s ire. The slaver must know it. Even the quarry slaves seem to find work farther along the massive pit walls.

Finally, the master finds some empty platitudes to throw out like a lifeline. “Forgive me, venerable Uchiha-sama, there are others. Better slaves! Bodies fit for the daimyō himself! Even the great Uchiha Madar—”

“Don’t you dare pervert my nii-san’s name with your disgusting mouth!” the Uchiha roars as he forgoes any semblance of playacting. A surge of chakra unlike anything Tobirama has ever felt slams through the mining pit. Screams rise up in the near distance as megaliths overturn, bursting free of their scaffolds and bracers. It’s only the stone he’s harnessed to that keeps his flesh safe in its wind-shadow.

Along with the overwhelming power comes a name, emerging from the past, unbidden and not so much unwelcome as unexpected. Izuna. Uchiha Izuna, Uchiha Madara’s last surviving brother. There are too many emotions wrapped around the brief flare of a child’s full-lipped smile—emotions Tobirama thought he had repressed completely. 

When the thunderclap settles, there’s only silence.

“Well, that was easy,” Izuna mutters under his breath, “didn’t think he’d walk right into it.” He stands up and says, louder, “no one is to pretend amity with the Uchiha main line in my hearing!” There’s an odd formality to the statement that immediately reeks of proclamation.

Lingering on the resonate echoes of Izuna’s voice, Tobirama doesn’t realize he’s not alone in his obeisance.

The slaver shuffles forward on hands and knees despite the ruination of his fine silks. “Yes Master. Command me, Master,” he sobs. There’s no more evidence of pomp in his manner, only the demeanor of a servitor. A slave. 

Izuna laughs, sweet as tinkling chimes. “Much better. Now get the fuck out of my sight. Go free the others, but I want you to stay and work until your heart explodes.” Waving off the once-slaver’s tearful thanks for his generosity, Izuna kneels down directly in front of Tobirama and takes up his hands. Even through the thick lines of callus, Tobirama can feel the warmth of him.

“Genjutsu,” Izuna states simply in answer to the unspoken question. He shrugs, then squeezes Tobirama’s hands once before releasing them to flash through a series of seals that makes the rope harness unravel of its own volition. Even the iron collar around Tobirama's neck turns to slag and floats off and away.

The only thing sweeter than the taste of freedom is the honesty in Izuna's smile. 

“I’ve been looking for you for a long time, Senju. Let’s get you home.” 

Tobirama closes his eyes.

This body is not his to dream with.

The future is not his to hope for.

But somewhere deep in the part of him that he long thought dead, a little boy opens his eyes for the first time in two decades.


End file.
